Q&A with Marco Ruiz Hernandez: The Enaex Robotics capabilities defining the future of mining
wireless enabled electronic system with 2 way
communication capabilities
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With unprecedented blasting capabilities and some of the first robotics technology of its kind, Enaex Robotics is ushering in the future of mining. The vision? To improve workers’ lives, maximise efficiency and achieve optimisation for mining operations worldwide. Director of Enaex Robotics, Marco Ruiz Hernandez, explains what its like to break brand new ground.
How do remote and robotic capabilities for underground mining improve workers’ welfare and reduce risk in high-exposure operations?
At Enaex Robotics our main objective is to increase safety, reduce exposure and positively impact productivity.
When it comes to eliminating risk, you can use protection gear, incorporate procedures or engineer tools, but the best way to do it is to eliminate the exposure of people during the blasting and loading process. That’s what we can achieve with this technology.
Our robotics equipment can perform all the necessary tasks without direct human intervention, operated from a control station.
Underground, workers have protection gear, moisture, dust and fumes from equipment to deal with. The conditions are radically better inside the control station. In the future, workers could even be operating technologies from another city, meaning they could stay near their families.
This is helping us to humanize mining – by making miners’ job conditions better.
The technology also helps speed up the development of the mine. When you’re dealing with risks, overall development is very slow. With this kind of technology, we can go faster and increase the productivity of the mine.
What has been the impact of Enaex’s technology?
We identified a very specific challenge in underground mining: the ‘rockburst’ phenomenon, where the face of the wall explodes under stress, which has the potential to kill a lot of people. That’s the starting point for this technology.
We have been developing the UG-iTruck® for several years now, which integrates all the main tasks that humans usually perform. In April this year, we made the first fully remote blast without human intervention or interaction. That was a huge milestone because we know there’s no precedent for this technology.
We are helping our clients overcome their challenges and progress their operations. The market is moving in this direction – and we are the first to deploy this technology and make it commercially available. We are already deploying this technology in a big underground mine in Chile, and we are open to receiving interest from other players in the market.
What are the challenges when it comes to developing remote capabilities for mining?
We are coming up with technology that is unique in the world. Designing technology for robotic manipulation of explosives is something that is very new. The challenge is how to design a system that is safe and effective and that can also be competitive to human operation.
You also have to have explosives that are robot-friendly. That’s one of our strengths. Because we are in the explosives world, we can develop and optimise our explosives to be manipulated with robots, and develop the robotic capability to manipulate them.
There’s another challenge related to authorities and regulations, because you have to demonstrate that the system works properly and is safe. Our relationship with the authorities was key to moving forward, meaning that we were able to demonstrate that our technologies are safe.
How did Enaex overcome these challenges?
All our decisions are driven by customer needs. We start with a pain point that exists for our clients, then we develop a specific technology to tackle it. That helps us build stronger bonds with our clients. We’re not shy in taking up a challenge to do something we’ve never done before.
With the technical challenges, the key to overcoming them was to cooperate. We have been very successful in coordinating different key talents internally at the design and development phase.
Our agility has helped us find a solution. It’s best to make mistakes as early as possible because then you can refine your design and incorporate iterations. Every time we build something, we test it as soon as possible.
With authorities and regulators, we put them at the beginning of the development timeline. The key is to make them part of the project form the beginning.
How do you envision the future of mining?
We are redesigning the process of mining and opening a new spectrum of ways to operate. Once you start incorporating these kinds of technologies and investing in drilling and haulage, you can approach optimisation for mining.
In the future, mining will be driven by automation. Today, open-pit and underground mining are moving towards remote and tele-remote environments. In the long term, I think we will have fully autonomous capabilities. Automation will enable a lot of productivity opportunities that are limited in the human-based operations we have today.
The vision is that mines will be fully autonomous, and there will be a fully integrated value chain. We will be part of this value chain, as one of the key links to connect the whole process.
Q&A with Marco Ruiz Hernandez: The Enaex Robotics capabilities defining the future of mining
wireless enabled electronic system with 2 way communication capabilities
read interview
With unprecedented blasting capabilities and some of the first robotics technology of its kind, Enaex Robotics is ushering in the future of mining. The vision? To improve workers’ lives, maximise efficiency and achieve optimisation for mining operations worldwide. Director of Enaex Robotics, Marco Ruiz Hernandez, explains what its like to break brand new ground.
How do remote and robotic capabilities for underground mining improve workers’ welfare and reduce risk in high-exposure operations?
At Enaex Robotics our main objective is to increase safety, reduce exposure and positively impact productivity.
When it comes to eliminating risk, you can use protection gear, incorporate procedures or engineer tools, but the best way to do it is to eliminate the exposure of people during the blasting and loading process. That’s what we can achieve with this technology.
Our robotics equipment can perform all the necessary tasks without direct human intervention, operated from a control station.
Underground, workers have protection gear, moisture, dust and fumes from equipment to deal with. The conditions are radically better inside the control station. In the future, workers could even be operating technologies from another city, meaning they could stay near their families.
This is helping us to humanize mining – by making miners’ job conditions better.
The technology also helps speed up the development of the mine. When you’re dealing with risks, overall development is very slow. With this kind of technology, we can go faster and increase the productivity of the mine.
What has been the impact of Enaex’s technology?
We identified a very specific challenge in underground mining: the ‘rockburst’ phenomenon, where the face of the wall explodes under stress, which has the potential to kill a lot of people. That’s the starting point for this technology.
We have been developing the UG iTruck for several years now, which integrates all the main tasks that humans usually perform. In April this year, we made the first fully remote blast without human intervention or interaction. That was a huge milestone because we know there’s no precedent for this technology.
We are helping our clients overcome their challenges and progress their operations. The market is moving in this direction – and we are the first to deploy this technology and make it commercially available. We are already deploying this technology in a big underground mine in Chile, and we are open to receiving interest from other players in the market.
What are the challenges when it comes to developing remote capabilities for mining?
We are coming up with technology that is unique in the world. Designing technology for robotic manipulation of explosives is something that is very new. The challenge is how to design a system that is safe and effective and that can also be competitive to human operation.
You also have to have explosives that are robot-friendly. That’s one of our strengths. Because we are in the explosives world, we can develop and optimise our explosives to be manipulated with robots, and develop the robotic capability to manipulate them.
There’s another challenge related to authorities and regulations, because you have to demonstrate that the system works properly and is safe. Our relationship with the authorities was key to moving forward, meaning that we were able to demonstrate that our technologies are safe.
How did Enaex overcome these challenges?
All our decisions are driven by customer needs. We start with a pain point that exists for our clients, then we develop a specific technology to tackle it. That helps us build stronger bonds with our clients. We’re not shy in taking up a challenge to do something we’ve never done before.
With the technical challenges, the key to overcoming them was to cooperate. We have been very successful in coordinating different key talents internally at the design and development phase.
Our agility has helped us find a solution. It’s best to make mistakes as early as possible because then you can refine your design and incorporate iterations. Every time we build something, we test it as soon as possible.
With authorities and regulators, we put them at the beginning of the development timeline. The key is to make them part of the project form the beginning.
How do you envision the future of mining?
We are redesigning the process of mining and opening a new spectrum of ways to operate. Once you start incorporating these kinds of technologies and investing in drilling and haulage, you can approach optimisation for mining.
In the future, mining will be driven by automation. Today, open-pit and underground mining are moving towards remote and tele-remote environments. In the long term, I think we will have fully autonomous capabilities. Automation will enable a lot of productivity opportunities that are limited in the human-based operations we have today.
The vision is that mines will be fully autonomous, and there will be a fully integrated value chain. We will be part of this value chain, as one of the key links to connect the whole process.
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